This week’s guest is Ira Pastor, CEO of the revolutionary biomedical firm BioQuark in Philadelphia. I had no idea who these people were until Ira messaged me about appearing on the show…and I’m so glad he did, because otherwise I don’t know when I would have learned about their work with new techniques that enable truly miraculous treatment of brain trauma, catastrophic organ failure, and other complex and confounding issues.

We’re on the cusp of another moment in history when we have to redefine what it means to be “dead,” and how far someone can go before they’re irrecoverable. And at the prow of that epochal shift is BioQuark’s method of simulating ooplasm – in other words, “tricking” our cells into thinking that they’re fertilized ova at the very beginning of embryonic development, so they’ll do amazing feats that even stem cells won’t do.

I have to admit, I went into this conversation a skeptic. And everything is still bracketed by a big “IF” – but I’m considerably more willing to believe that this is coming, soon, and that it’s going to be a good thing. Get ready to have your mind blown by a conversation about the miracles that might be commonplace in just a few more years…

• Why do some other organisms (like jellyfish and amphibians) demonstrate such awesome regenerative abilities, but human beings don’t?

• How to reset a cell’s internal “clock” to zero and induce extraordinary regenerative abilities;

• How this research builds on existing science dating back to the 1950s (and retrieves “lost knowledge” from other animals we’ve been evolutionarily separated from for hundreds of millions of years);

• How biology as a lab science has changed over the last century, and how that (in part) reflects changing sentiments about the relationship between masculine and feminine, physics and biology, waves and particles;

• Neuro-regeneration and neuro-reanimation research and the link to The Immaculate Conception and our lineage’s trend toward increasing neoteny and pedomorphism;

• Regarding Liz Parrish, Aubrey DeGrey, and other death-resisting transhumanists…where does work like Bioquark’s fit into the picture of radical life extension and its current genomic/pharmaceutical bias?

• What’s the worst that could happen? Is this going to be affordable for everyone? Ira addresses issues of unequal access and (“access for everybody, it’s not just for the billionaires”) and puts Michael at ease about other possible negative outcomes. (Including ZOMBIES.)

• The Future of the Medical Industry: a decrease in pharmaceutical company dominance and the business of endless management, and the rise of a business of CURES – no lifelong dependence on medication, no 3D printed transplant organs, just good old-fashioned “miraculous” healing, along with electroceuticals, microbiome supplements, parasite-based treatments,

• The Future of Medical Research: international alliances, Right To Try, navigating a complex menu of potential regulatory environments for research, and how Merck partnered with China to create a tropical island hub for medical research tourism…